Posts

Showing posts with the label stranded pilot whales

Beached Whales in India Injured by Earthquake

Image
Capt David Williams, Chairman Deafwhale Society, the oldest whale conservation group in the world! More than 100 short-finned pilot whales washed up on Indian shores; 80 died on the beach. The rest were towed back to the sea by motor boats. Watch the Video above. Notice the strong wind blowing towards the shore. Also, notice the white-caps and the wind-driven currents washing to the beach. The strong flow of the current is guiding the whales to the sand. They obviously have no sense of direction. This is exactly what one would expect if the pod had suffered a prior pressure-related injury that had disabled their ability to echo-navigate. In other words, their travel path is under the control of incoming current, not the whales. The only logical answer is that they were lost at sea long before they reach the shoreline. The whales began washing up on Monday night January 11, 2016. They came ashore after the tide had dropped to its lowest and started to rise again

Seaquakes Cause 65 Pilot Whales to Beach in Golden Bay on 14-18 January 2014

Image
Details of 3 seaquakes that might have caused this stranding: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=349210 http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=349185 http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=349169 The pod of ~85 pilot whales that beached themselves repeatedly between 14-18 January 2014 were injured by excessive pressure changes (seaquakes) above the epicenter of 3 quakes that erupted in the seafloor of the Southern Ocean about 5,000 km upstream from Farewell Spit on 22 December 2013 (see links above). Strong winds caused rough seas, which separated the pod in Golden Bay. Twelve whales went ashore with the shoreward flow of the incoming tide on the morning of 14 January. That night, as the tide started washing out to sea, the rescuers refloated the whales and guided them back into waist deep water and let them go. They swam a few kilometers away, but when the tide started rising and the surface currents began flowing back to the